The Ethical Principles, as outlined here, form the DNA of Arts Collaboratory and the point to which we return whenever we encounter new questions and challenges in our working process. Ethical Principles are for a self-regulatory system, which is to be distinguished from self-control and policing.

Open Ethics, Not a Manifesto

It is important to state that the Arts Collaboratory Ethical Principles are not the moralistic rule which we need to obey, but which we consolidate and adopt as we practice them. Ethics is a process. Open mechanism serves as the basis of the workings of the organisation.

Arts Collaboratory Ethics

Arts Collaboratory celebrates openness. Openness is our ethic to share knowledge publicly and to 'invite' others into the ecosystem. Openness also allows each of us to dissolve, disappear or reduce in the need for certain resources from the AC. This can be seen as a self-checking system, which then allows other organisations to join, to bring in new resources and receive support when needed.

Arts Collaboratory is a decentralised, translocal organization. Entanglement and non-hierarchical relationships, are two of the main characters of the ecosystem.

Decisions are made through consensus and an active study of dissensus and power is dissolved through sharing.

Arts Collaboratory runs by shared-management and shared-governance. We all can give mutual support to address hierarchies in our own organisations;

Arts Collaboratory values the diversity of all members, taking advantage of its quality as an ‘unnatural network’. In the same vein, it also embraces the diversity of commitments of all members and provides room for the diversity of the members’ shared-determination.

Arts Collaboratory is dedicated to critical thinking and deep collaboration.

We take learning and unlearning processes in common and as the core of our spirit. We call learning and unlearning ‘study’ that we want to build as our habit. This means, we remain open to self-reflexive and contextual thinking. The emphasis on study invites the responsibility for sharing what one learns or unlearns: Tooling what we study is also a key for our operation and forms a radical pedagogic method, which in turn lets us build our capacity and lets us share our radical imaginations with others.

We are dedicated to critical hospitality (distinguished from the service providing hospitality in tourism) and a critical notion of friendship and conviviality. Our relations are not social capital, that should be measured and commodified.

We take conversation as the best means for learning and relating to each other. This allows us to study with a focus on process rather than on production. The conversation also makes it possible to stay vulnerable and honest.

This also means that we value discomfort rather than comfort in our relations and collaborative works.

Trust is the basis of our relations. We have a strong faith in abilities as well as in failures, because what we aim for is a network as a space for radical imagination.

Inherent in the trust is collective risk-taking practices, which can pervade Arts Collaboratory with flexibility and the willingness to permit constant mutation, change, and re-evaluation.

We value experiments and serious playfulness.

Arts Collaboratory is based on care, which works against the system of punishment, exclusion and indifference. In doing so, reciprocity or mutualism serve as the basic principle. The idea of self-limitation accompanies it: your share is also based on the consideration of others and in order to share you may need to limit your own (in)take.

We take reciprocity, or our sense of reciprocity, as a practice, which would precipitate the development of solidarity. Solidarity thus can be defined as a mutual feeling as well as a space where certainty amidst uncertainty could be created.